Chitas in English

ChitasInEnglish@netscape.net

Find out how you can learn Chitas (Chumash with Rashi, Thillim, Tanya) in English on your Palm powered device. Iyar 2, 5763 - May 4, 2003. Birthday of the Rebbe Maharash One of the reasons why I bought a Palm OS powered CLIE was to be able to study Chitas in English on the go. I was rather disappointed to find out that it was not readily available for download. After finding a freely available software that was especially designed to display two related texts on one screen, I set out to turn the Chumash text and Rashi's commentary into a format that this software can display. I am sharing the results here with you.

The screenshots throughout this document have resolution 160x160. As instituted by the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Rebbe Rayatz: Chumash, Tehillim, Tanya. The following are excerpts from Sefer HaMinhagim, The Book of Chabad-Lubavitch Customs (complete entry): Chumash with the Commentary of Rashi: Every day one studies one passage of the current week's Sidra [i.e., the Sidra to be publicly read on the forthcoming Shabbos] with the commentary of Rashi. Thus, on the first day of the week one reaches Sheini, on the second one reaches Shlishi, and so on. [...] Tehillim: After the morning prayers every day including Shabbos, Yom-Tov, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur [after Mussaf] one recites chapters of Tehillim as apportioned for the days of the month. [...] When the 29th is the last day of the month, one reads the portion for the 30th day as well.[...] As is well known, Tehillim (including the above-mentioned daily portion) is not read at night, from the appearance of the stars until after midnight. However, one does study Chumash and Tanya. The above restriction does not apply on Rosh HaShanah, the Days of Penitence, Yom Kippur and Hoshana Rabbah. Tanya: The daily passages should be studied as set out in the annual study guide entitled Moreh Shiur [which appears as the first appendix to all current editions of the Tanya].

Above you see a screenshot displaying Bereishit 35:5 with Rashi (Parshat Vayishlach, 5th portion, about 38th verse in this portion). As I mentioned already in , the only work I did on this project was converting the existing text to a format that the reader software can present. I was completly relying on preexisting text and software. Below you can see the "About" screen of the reader software.

This software is distributed under the GNU General Public License. You may download the software as a compiled, ready-to-use application (27 kB) or as source code (222 kB) as well. Please, see the license (also included with the above distributions) for all terms and conditions including the fact that the software is provided with NO warranty. Installing and using the program from the compiled distribution above is straightforward. (Note: Sometimes you do need to reset your PDA after installing a new text for the reader, and occasionally the reader does crash the OS and then you have to do the pin-in-the-hole trick. This happens rather seldom, and so far I have not found it too disruptive.) Although the Rashi text is in English, nevertheless it was necessary for the translators to quote Hebrew words/phrases to make Rashi's point more readily understandable. For this reason it is helpful to have Hebrew fonts on your handheld. You can either purchase Hebrew Lite or Hebrew Support+ from Penticon Technologies (free evaluation copies are available) or use the free fonthack123.

I am not familiar with fonthack123 so I cannot provide any details on this except that my understanding is that it works. If you are more familiar with it, and can provide details on download, installation etc., I would appreciate. Without some sort of Hebrew fonts, the Hebrew text will appear like this:

The text for the reader software was entirely derived from Chabad.org's Daily Study sections. In the footer of each of their Chumash with Rashi pages they indicate that the text is "Graciously provided & © by Judaica Press". Following that link takes you to a page with the contact information for Judaica Press, and a link to their product order page where you can order "The Judaica Press Complete Tanach with Rashi" on CD.

At the bottom of each of the Chumash and Rashi pages Chabad.org also indicates "© 2001-2003 Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center." My contribution was to download the text from the website and to convert it to a format that the reader can interpret. The only minor modifications I made (as of version 1.01) are: Removing the Hebrew vowels, since neither Penticon Hebrew Support nor fonthack123 is able to display them. Adding Rashi to the first pasuk of Parshat Mikeitz and Bo. Separating Parshat Matot-Massei into Matot and Massei (even though the next time these two parshiot are read separately is going to be in 2005, I did it for the sake of completeness). Adding some features, see . The .pdb files (zipped): Chumash v1.01 (278 kB - unzipped 388 kB) Rashi v1.01 (744 kb - unzipped 1 MB) Just HotSync them to your PDA and they will be available from the reader. The reader program breakes the text down into different sections. Since the text I am making available here is specifically ment to be studied as part of the Chitas Study Cycle, see , the meaning of these sections was changed slightly: Logical Section Original Meaning Meaning in the context of Chumash Chitas Book A named book A weekly parsha A Chapter A numbered chapter One of seven daily portions B (automatic numbering restarts in each book/weekly parsha) Verse A numbered verse A numbered verse, but sometimes used as a placeholder etc., so the automatic verse numbers are not very meaningful C (automatic numbering restarts in each chapter/daily partion)

As can be seen on the "Preferences" screen above, the reader can display various information. The meaning of these in our context is the following: "Book" Chapter number (appears at the beginning of each daily portion and at the beginning of each new chapter) 1 "Chap. No." Correct pasuk number 2 "Title" Rashi's quote from the pasuk 3 "Text" Text of pasuk or Rashi's commentary 4 "Verse No." Automatic verse numbers (not very useful - see above) C

I added the following features to make it easier to use these texts for studying Chumash Chitas (see screenshot above of Parshat Va'etchanan, 5th portion): [No Rashi] - If there is no Rashi on a particular pasuk (such as 6:3 above), I indicated this right after the pasuk number. This way you do not have to look for it on the bottom panel. At the end of each daily portion I added '* * *', to make it easier to notice the end of sections. For those parshiot that may be read separately or joint together, I included both versions, and added a note at the beginning of the first parsha (see below).

Please, send me your comments, suggestions or any other feedback you might have.

Or just drop a note saying you are using this Chumash with Rashi text to study Chumash Chitas on your PDA. Address: ChitasInEnglish@netscape.net Looking forward to hearing from you.